


Tha Mi Sgith

by kittydesade



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-18
Updated: 2012-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-31 08:58:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The courtship of Rumpelstiltskin and his lady, before the curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tha Mi Sgith

He wasn't the bravest boy in the village, nor yet the cleverest, but he was both brave and clever enough to know how to court her and go about it without hesitation. Even if her mother was rumored to be a witch (she wasn't, she was just very good at knowing things) and her father was often too far away to know what the boys in the village called her, she knew good from bad. She knew who was trying to get her behind the tavern to raise her skirts and who asked her to walk for the pleasure of her company. Too many of the first and too few of the second.

But then there was the one boy who stopped to watch her long enough to know to stop the trader who passed through the village. How he got the money for those pigments she didn't know and he never told her, but they made some of the most brilliant greens and golds and scarlets she'd ever seen come out of a dye bath.

He came by while she hung them up, too. "Those look nice." He had a nice, shy smile.

"It's a funny thing, I came out to get the eggs and there were these little pots. Like the chickens laid mixing powders in the night. Can't imagine where they came from." 

"Must be some sort of magic chicken," he told her with a straight face. "Might want to keep that one, yeah?"

"I do think I might." 

She waited for him to say something further, to ask for some favor in exchange for the dyes, but he didn't. Just kept smiling that small smile of his, and it seemed like it was enough for him just to be around.

But why someone would go to all that trouble and spend coin he surely couldn't afford just to stand around and make jokes about chickens, she wasn't sure she understood. Not in the deep-down way.

She had just opened her mouth to thank him properly, too, when her mother called. "Cat!" Coming around the house, too. She threw the last of the skeins over the drying rod, not the neatest job but then her mother wouldn't come out and see her talking to some strange boy. "Catriona, girl, where are you? Where've you gone to now..."

"Catriona?" he asked, grinning. Mouthed, not asked. They were whispering through the skeins and she knew she was getting dye on her cheeks.

She grinned back. "That's my name. What's yours?"

Only then her mother's hand clapped down on her shoulder and she yelped as she jumped and spun around. "There you are, girl, what's wrong with you? How long does it take you to hang yarn to dry and who are you talking to, anyway?" And when they both turned around again the boy had run away. Well, and she knew what he looked like now. She'd keep an eye out for him.

  


  


  


The days turned. She took down the yarn when it dried and her mother and her aunt had all manner of suggestions as to what she should do with it, but she put it away for a bit instead. No, she had her own ideas, half-formed and years distant though they were. Instead she went and set up her smaller loom for practice, using the rough ends of what she'd spun. Long, tedious labor on the reel, and by the time she had her whole warp spun off and half on the frame she was ready for a break. 

"Go on, then," her mother nodded her towards the door, perhaps feeling sympathetic pains in her own back and shoulders.

Catriona rolled her shoulders and stretched her arms in front of her, swung around to the back, back to the front again, turning slow circles and blinking in the sunlight. And she wasn't looking where she was going, so that when the back of her hand slapped his shoulder she jumped, yelping. 

"Sorry!" he squeaked too, then cleared his throat. "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you."

The boy with the dyes. Her cheeks flushed instantly, and she clapped both hands over her mouth to keep her from saying something foolish. Which of course only made her look more foolish, maybe. 

He looked so sweet, too. Wisps of dark brown hair escaped from whatever he'd bound it back with, dirt smudged his face and made the shy smile all the more endearing. Fine features, a little elfin, sharp without making him seem pinched or unfriendly. Delicate. He had delicate cheekbones and delicate mouth and deep dark eyes that had secrets and mysteries. And now, of course, she was staring and probably looked like some sort of stunned goat. "Sorry," she mumbled behind her hands before she dropped them "I'm sorry, I should have been watching where I was, um..."

"Dancing?" he offered.

"Yes." Twirling. Aimlessly. Being silly. "I was just, um." One finger pointed back over her shoulder at the loom. "The warp, and it, my, it's tiring work, and you wouldn't," she took a breath and pressed her lips together until she could make words come out in some way that didn't make her sound quite so much like an idiot. His smile broadened into a grin. "I was just taking some air. Between the weaving."

"I see that," he said, and she whacked him on the shoulder again. This time on purpose. 

They stood there for a moment, watching each other with awkward but happy smiles and neither of them too sure what to say or do. At least, she didn't know what to do next. He didn't seem to know what to do, neither. After another breath it all came tumbling out, and she brought her hand up again to hide the smile of relief that she wasn't the only one who couldn't make her words behave themslves. 

"I was wondering, that is, erm, if you'd. I mean, since you're taking the air anyway. If you'd care to walk..." 

"Of course," she interrupted, perhaps too eager. Her mother would have all kinds of words for this, but her mother wasn't there. She took his arm before he could offer it, but they did manage to go evenly in step up the small hill to the main road that wound through the village. 

As they crested the hill she straightened, two or three heads turning their way and her mother's status as outsider and a bit fey came back to her. She did most of the buying of food at market, went and traded for their dyes and needles or whatever else they needed because no one wanted to look her mother in the eye. Seeing all those sideways looks reminded her of that and she stepped a little closer to him.

"Is something wrong?" he frowned a little, and she tried to draw herself taller so that she was huddling less against his side.

"Why me?" she murmured. Not wanting to give any of the other young women the pleasure of hearing this; the boys already thought of her as easy prey for their lusts, being unprotected by a looming father. She didn't need to be a target of anyone's jealousy. "Why me, why now?"

"Why..." he started to answer, then stopped, and they walked another few paces, past the blacksmith's and the old healer's house. The air blew more chill, or maybe it just felt that way. Some of the excitement gone out of the early afternoon stroll. They drew a couple looks from the elders, but mostly it was the other girls who glared. 

They'd almost reached the baker's ovens and the tavern beside it when he spoke again. "I've seen you at the market. You have a kind look about you." 

"A kind look?" She didn't understand. He was, unless she mistook, the son of one of the greatest land-holders in the village. And he was out walking with her because she looked kind? 

He shrugged, and they took a slow turn around at the center of the village, around the communal well. "You treat people fair, you don't," he glanced pointedly at the cluster of girls outside the tavern, three of them, staring. "Spread gossip."

"Who would I tell?" she commented, biting back all the things that immediately came to mind to say. If he didn't think she thought that the only reason Claire had such nice dresses was because she slept with the merchant whose wife was perpetually ill, or that the other girl's pretty jewelry came stolen from rich folks who stayed at her parents' inn, she wasn't going to let him know. "Besides, our situation in this town isn't so great that I can go about with my nose in the air like some people."

"Oh." 

They kept walking. A whole other kind of tension creased her forehead now, but she kept her back straight and her chin up. No point in sinking down till she got home and out of his sight.

He walked her back to the top of her little hill where the road dipped down, and she summoned up a smile from somewhere, patting his hand. "Anyway, it was good to see you again." 

"It was good to see you," he said, though he sounded more distant than he had at first. Reconsidering her company, she supposed. "So, shall I come by again tomorrow?"

She opened her mouth to tell him it was all right, she understood, and anyway it wasn't as though they knew each other well or had friends in common, or at all in her case. Only that wasn't at all what he'd said and she shut her mouth again. "Yes?" her face scrunched up in puzzlement.

He nodded. Flashed a half a grin, blinking wide and startled eyes. "All right then," and he scampered over the rise and was gone, turning once to wave to her. 

She was so startled she completely forgot to call after him until he was barely in sight, and even then it didn't seem so important that she didn't even know his name.

  


  


  


It was, however, the first thing she said when he came to her the day after next and asked to walk with her. "I don't even know your name!"

"Mumblething," he mumbled. His cheeks turned about as pink as hers must have when he'd asked her to walk the other day. 

Her eyebrows shot up. "What was that?" And why would anyone be embarrassed by their name, anyway? Unless it was silly. Or rude. He mumbled it again, but this time clear enough that she understood anyway. 

"Rumplestiltskin."

Cat blinked. Pulled a face and blinked again, and then they were over the hill and towards the town proper and she could at least bite her tongue and not repeat it in public when he was so shy about it. "That's..." What could she say that wasn't bursting into giggles over such a funny sounding name? Because it was, at least to her. She'd never heard those particular sounds in that order before. "That's quite a mouthful."

He kept his head hunched between his shoulders until she shifted against his arm to force him to straighten again. "My grandfather. He came here from..." One hand flapped off in the direction of some other country she didn't know. But she pretended she did, and nodded. "And he died when I was a baby."

And his parents wanted to honor him. "He must have been a great man."

Her new friend made a face, she couldn't manage to even think the name without giggling just yet. "He was a crotchety old bastard. Or so I hear, but he left us the farm. I think Mama thought he should be honored some way."

"Well, I think it's a lovely name." It came out before she could stop herself. Now she really couldn't laugh, but she drew herself up straight and dragged him with her, proud as any lord and lady on a tour of their garden. He blinked at her. 

"You think so?"

"I do," she nodded. "Rumplestiltskin," there, she tried it out again, only this time she rolled the first 'r' around in her mouth. It wasn't _that_ bad. "It's very... stately."

"You mean old-fashioned." 

He hid his smile behind his hand more often than not, too. And the girls were staring again, but it was easier to ignore them the second time around. So she knew his name and he knew hers, and they knew a little bit about each other's families, but there was still one thing she didn't know. "So why me? And why now?" All right, that was two things, she'd cheated a bit. But she still wasn't sure of his answer

They came around the well again, and this time they settled on the small bench in front of the apothecary. Half turned to face each other after a little dance of uncertainty wherein neither of them was sure how much was too forward. She crossed her ankles under the bench and waited for his answer, hands folded in her lap. No one could accuse her of being immodest that way.

"Now..." he shrugged, head ducked and looking at the ground. "Well, now is when the, erm..." One finger darted along the main road through town. Now was when the dye merchant came through, she understood, or a few days ago, rather. "And you... you're different."

Kind, he'd said. "Not so different," she shook her head a little. "Not so kind."

"Yes you are," he looked up. "You could have said anything, just now. But you didn't. You didn't laugh or..." and that trailed off too, and she bit her lip when she thougth about how nearly she had. 

"That's not... that's not kindness. That's just being polite. How Mama raised me, anyway. And it's not that special and besides, you're old Tomas's son, you could be spending time with anyone in town. Not," she added before he could get the wrong idea. "That I mind. I mean. I like this, these walks. I mean..." Oh, now her cheeks flushed pink again, one hand over her mouth and ducking her head till her hair fell down over her face. "I like this."

She couldn't see the smile but she could hear it in his voice, easily. "I enjoy your company, too. Isn't that enough?"

"I suppose." Still hiding, until slender fingers peeked through the strands of her hair and tucked it behind her ears again and then there was nowhere to hide. Who was she hiding from, anyway? A slight young man with dark eyes and a warm, beautiful smile? 

"That's settled, then." 

She was blushing too hard to argue, even if she'd wanted to, so she just nodded and laced her fingers through his when he reached for her hand.

  


  


  


The why's seemed less important over time. When she thought about it in her home picking at her warp or spinning out the threads it seemed unreal. He was the son of a farmer who owned his own land, kept his own stock, and she was the daughter of a supposed witch and a sailor who half the town was convinced didn't exist. Their standing among the townsfolk couldn't be more different. And in the last fortnight alone at least two or three other girls and one particularly nasty young man had all but called her a bastard to her face. Not long ago she would have come up with some suitably nasty retort.

But he thought she was kind. The boy with the shy smile and the funny name, smaller than any other young man his age and still she could pick him out at a distance. And he thought, for a wonder, that she was kind and sweet, and so she kept her silence and lifted her head a little higher and said none of the nasty retorts she wanted to say.

Anyway, that vicious young man would know a bastard child in another six months, the way Claire looked. "Likely half the reason she's taking offense to you is because she's wondering about her own straits," her mother said when Catriona told her, squeezing water out of the last of the skeins. 

Catriona trusted her mother's eye, but frowned anyway. "Why come after me, though? It's not as though anyone else..." she bit her lip. "I mean, they don't look at him. I've seen them. They'll give him the time of day if he asks, and they're polite because of his father's lands, but they don't look at him."

"You've seen them not looking? Here, go and hang these." The older woman chuckled. "You mean you've watched them to make sure they're not interested in your young man." 

The girl ducked her head, refusing to admit that young Rumplestiltskin was hers in any way, let alone that she might want him to be hers. "Anyway, she's also taking on with old Craggyface," Catriona muttered, and her mother laughed. 

"Be nice. Whoever Claire's carrying on with, Tomas or Cormac or anyone else, it'll be Tomas takes the blame for it. He's marriagable, and both their parents are the sort not to want a scandal." 

She shuddered, tossing skein after skein of wool over the drying rods. "I wouldn't do that."

"Do what?"

"Get myself into, um. Such a state." Sure, she knew how such things were done and might have even thought about it a time or two, but she had no wish to be an even greater pariah than she already was. Or to make another child go through what she had. "Why did you, anyway?" 

Her mother's hands stilled over the wheel she'd been adjusting, and Catriona bit her lip. She hadn't meant to imply what she had, she knew her parents loved each other even if father was away more often than not. Her mother's answer was a long time coming as she sat down heavily on the stool. "We were young. We thought we could do anything. We thought we would survive, and thrive, no matter what we did. And when you came along," she smiled a very tired, weary smile that scared Catriona out of asking further questions. "We thought there could be no finer thing than to be a family. Sometimes... love is a powerful thing, little Cat. It can make you feel as though nothing can touch you."

She had no idea what her mother could possibly mean by that look, and went out to set the drying rods on their poles. 

After a little while her mother joined her, hanging the taller ones up higher than Catriona could reach, which wasn't so much of a difference anymore. She was about to her full growth. "Anyway, I've seen you hard at work over your tatting," her mother teased. "With an eye to filling that cedar chest at last?"

Even at night, it felt like her cheeks lit up with blushing. "I wasn't... I'm not..." She couldn't very well deny it, could she? Not when her mother had probably caught her looking through some of the pattern sketches for weavings, knitted blankets and small cloths and picking out designs to do. "I might be." 

"And there's nothing wrong with that," she threw an arm around her daughter's shoulders. "So that's what you were saving those skeins for. Does he know?"

"I don't know how he couldn't, I mean. Oh." Did he know what she was doing, the plans or dreams or somewhat in-between she had. "No. I don't think so. I mean, I think he just bought those dyes to be nice." 

"No one pays coin for dyes so bright unless they mean to be more than nice," the older woman pointed out. "I'd wager he's had his eye on you for some time."

That just plain didn't make sense to her, and she said so. "But why _me_ ," she wailed, as though asking it of her mother when she'd asked it of the air and the boy himself for the last fortnight or so would give any other answer.

"Because he liked the way your hair looked damp from washing in the sunlight. Because you smiled at him. Because you are the best little weaver in the town, because no reason at all. There's rarely an answer to why one person takes a fancy to another, Cat, not one we can understand by reasoning it out, anyway. Don't you like him?"

"I don't know. I suppose so." 

They ducked back into the house and her mother tugged her down to sitting on the weaving bench. "You suppose so?"

Shrug. "But he has such a funny name. And he's so tiny, and..."

Her mother elbowed her lightly when she didn't go on. "And? Tell me about him."

"And? And nothing, he's tiny, he's not at all suited to farm work, really, although he's stronger than he looks," she had to admit. "I've seen him with the horses, hauling around those bales of hay as large as he is, I swear..."

"You're not much more than a peapod pixie yourself, you know."

Catriona snorted. "Yes, but I'm not half as small as he makes himself out to be. It's as though when anyone talks to him he shrinks in size, and his eyes go all big and dark," she spread her fingers around her eyes in imitation. "And you can tell because when he smiles it's all teeth and nerves, but when he really smiles, like he means it, you know? It's not all teeth, it's all soft and you can imagine that every part of his mouth is soft, and..."

And if her mother'd had any mercy in her at all she would have stopped her right there, Catriona decided later. Only instead she found herself babbling about his mouth and his eyes and his narrow fingers and the way his hair fell down in strands around his face no matter how he tied it back, and his delicate little nose of all things, and how when they walked around the town instead of within it his gait went long and striding and bold. And he did know what he was doing about the animals, and they talked about her spinning and weaving and so on. 

The candle had burned halfway down by the time she was too tired to babble on, though at least they'd gotten the new warp set up on the loom and advanced some. The last mark or so she'd ended up talking while her mother clacked back and forth on the loom, shuttle flying. All the things they'd talked about and all the things she'd thought about saying spilling out of her. And apparently all it took was the right nudging question.

"All right, young miss. Time for bed, you." Her mother straightened her up by the shoulders and turned her towards the ladder. "You can have new adventures with your young man tomorrow. After your chores are done, mind." 

Too tired to object, she scrambled into the loft and onto her bed, curling up under the blankets. Her last thought called back to what her mother said, of how making her a present of dyes for her yarns showed that he'd been watching her for some time. Now the question wasn't _why_ but _how long?_ And why had it taken him so long to speak up, anyway?

  


  


  


"I don't like you spending so much time with that girl," came the rumbling over his head. 

The boy in question, Rumplestiltskin, who was starting not to mind being called that so much, pretending he was busy picking out stones from the hooves of their plowhorses and didn't hear his father. 

"Did you hear me? I said I don't..."

Or he might not have that option. "I heard you," he called up and over the edge of the stall, releasing that last hoof and getting out of the way of the horse's stamping. They could go and graze in the little paddock outside the barn now, that chore done for the day. And getting the cows watered and turning the hay and making sure it hadn't set to mildew, and then he could go out to the other edge of town and see if she was there. 

His father loomed in the doorway of the barn. "Oh, good, you've almost finished. I need your help with the far field, the stakes came down again in the last windstorm..."

He bit back the groan. At that rate he'd never make it to the far end of town before she started the afternoon's weaving or spinning or whichever it was today. "Yes, sir," he said anyway, especially after what his father had just said. 

Not quite quick enough. The old man frowned. "You had something else you planned to do with your time, today?" Warning in his tone. 

"No, sir." He wiped his hands on his trousers, since he wouldn't be passing by her house today. 

He still wasn't fooling anyone. "The girl is trouble, son." 

Rumplestiltskin, spindly legs churning to keep up with his father, had heard this before. Ever since someone had come tattling home to tell the household who he was spending time with these days there had been quiet murmurs and sidelong glances, more and more mutterings about how certain people weren't fit company for landed folk and honest farmers, the immorality of having children out of wedlock and how some young women were so free with their favors. 

"She's a bastard daughter and likely no better than her mother, and I won't have you spending time with her and getting drawn into her ways." Whatever those ways were. He had yet to hear anything other than speculation. 

"Father, you don't even know her. Either of them. If you'd just go and see, she's wonderful, her mother makes these lovely..."

"I don't care what they do or what they make, boy, so long as they aren't making trouble for us. Which would be a great deal easier to believe if you weren't wandering all over the town with that girl!" 

" _That girl_ has a name," he snapped back before he could be surprised at his own audacity. "Her name is Catriona and I ..."

Only he didn't have ready words to describe her, how he thought of her, how he would ever explain to his family that he wanted to spend as much time with her as he could. How any problem he had seemed easier to bear when he was with her, and how her matter-of-fact fortitude and spirit made all the colors brighter. And everything seemed fresh and new and clean and his father stared at him as though he'd lost his mind. 

"Get in the house." 

He'd lost this argument before he'd even made it. Rumplestiltskin's head dropped, fingers twitching. He couldn't give up this easily, and he couldn't force words out past the churning in his stomach. 

"Father..."

"Get in the house!"

His teeth clamped shut on the words he wanted to say, none of them stringing together into anything that made sense. Instead he stomped into the house as hard as his skinny legs would take him, through the house, and out the front door again. He was gone by the time his father realized he'd neglected to tell the young man to wait for him inside. Out the front door again, down the thoroughfare, and breaking into a run by the time he reached the well at the center of town.

  


  


  


"Cat, did you remember the latch?" 

Catriona was almost done threading the warp chains onto the loom, bent at the waist at an angle that had the front beam jammed up into her stomach. At first she thought her mother meant some latch on one of the containers that kept their pigments from the sun and the elements, and she looked over to the dye shelf. "I thought I..." And the door banged open.

Both women looked up and blinked. Rumplestiltskin didn't quite fill the doorway, but he did look wild around the eyes and out of breath. 

"Cat?" Her mother looked over her shoulder at her. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

She meant to take a step forward, but one foot slipped out from under her and she almost fell face-first into her warp, catching herself on one of the side beams. "No!" she yelped. Stuck out a hand as Rumplestiltskin darted forward to help her. "I... what are you doing here?" There. She had her balance back under her again, and tugged her dress down where it had rucked up over her front.

He attempted a start at it while her mother went over to the fire and swapped out the smaller, empty dye pot for the kettle. "There... I, um."

The older woman sat down on the loom bench, taking Catriona's place and making a show of checking the warp for tangled threads, knots, mistakes in the pattern. She threw her mother a grateful look and took Rumplestiltskin's hand, tugging him over to the table to sit while the water boiled. "What happened? Did something happen?"

When it was just her he seemed more able to speak. "I was going to tell Father. About us, I mean. He... disapproved." 

"... He disapproved?" It sounded like a mild word for whatever had sent him across town to her house, out of breath and whatever else was chasing him. 

"In the strongest terms possible," he shook his head. "I should have said something. I'm sorry, I should have said something, I should have made it more clear to him that..." 

"He's your father," she said, which sounded as though she were making excuses but she had to say something. His hair was all matted in sweat and curled in the damp, hanging over his face. She smoothed back the strands. "He's your father, and you can't very well say ..." 

But the stricken, protesting look on his face brought home what she was saying. What he had said a moment ago. His father disapproved, and his father was a man of power and good standing in the village, and she was a bastard daughter of a witch. And his father had said no to whatever match might come out of their walks, and neither of them was likely to be able to change his mind.

"I don't think there's anything I can say," he said, after a long silence in which they dropped their gazes to their clasped hands, one after the other. "I don't know what he has in mind that I should do with my life, but I doubt it was this."

It stung. More than any words from any of the other village girls, or their parents, or even their parents' parents. More than the sideways looks when she went to market, it stung because she was no one. She was a girl of questionable origins and even more questionable moral character, and the best she could hope for was that some traveling tinker might take pity on her. Certainly no one in the village would marry her.

"Assuming I wanted to marry," she muttered to herself. 

He blinked. "You don't... I mean..." he corrected hastily. "I wasn't... not that I wasn't, I mean, if you..." Both of them ignored the strangled noises coming from the vicinity of the loom, and he took a moment to breathe again. "If you'll have me. And if you want to be married. And..."

"Shouldn't I be saying that to you? I'm the one with nothing to show for herself here," she laughed, startled to find she was crying a little as well. 

"Nothing to show?" he freed one hand from their grip on each other, gestured around at the loom. "What about all this? You spin and you weave, a finer thread and a, a more beautiful tapestry than anything I've ever seen come through our town." 

More strangled noises by the loom. Catriona fought down the urge to look around and see her mother trying not to laugh out loud at their awkward courtship. 

"And you're the son of the richest farmer in town. And I'm..."

"Brilliant. And clever. And wise." 

And blushing. She turned her face away, tucked her head as far into her shoulder as she could crane her neck around because the blushing and the smiling was not at all dignified. "Not so clever."

"More clever than I am," his voice came from closer by her head, and in a moment they'd managed to wrap their arms around each other. She hadn't meant to curl into his embrace, and she didn't know if he meant to tug her closer, but here they were anyway. "Clever enough to know that the rest of their opinions don't matter. That what matters about us is what we do, not what they think."

"Did I say that?" she mumbled into his shoulder. "I must have been mad." But it sounded like something her mother would say.

"As good as said that, anyway," he said, and took a breath to say something else when there was another pounding on the door. This one harder, heavier. Her mother moved past her field of vision and, even huddled in against Rumplestiltskin's chest, she saw the older woman pick up the biggest, heaviest dye paddle, still stained with pigments, and hold it slightly out of sight as she opened the door.

"There's no need to break down my door, you great daft lout," she snapped. "I can hear you just fine."

The man in the doorway resembled her would-be lover only by rough shape and proportion. He was a handspan taller at least, and had to duck to get through the doorway. His hair was lighter, reddish brown rather than the dark bronze of his son's, and his frame was broader. Next to him Rumplestiltskin looked frail and assembled from a rough collection of sticks.

"Get up," he growled. 

Her fingers dug into his shoulders. He didn't seem inclined to go anywhere either. 

"Get up!" his father roared, and took a step forward only to be met with a large oak dye paddle in the middle of his chest. 

"Get out of my house, Angus, before I beat you out of it." Cat had never seen her mother quite _this_ angry before, even having been on the end of a few tongue-lashings for infractions and disrespect. "You've no business here, and you were not invited."

"My business is with my son, witch. No business of yours." He tried to push his way past her again and she hit him upside the head with the paddle. 

"Get out. If the boy has business with you, he can conduct it elsewhere." 

Rumplestiltskin had to pry her fingers loose from his tunic as his father advanced on her mother, as violence began to boil over in their suddenly too-small home. "It's all right," he said, and his quiet tone cut through the tension better than her mother's shouting. "I'll need to get my things regardless."

She stared at him. Because it was safer than looking down towards the front door, and because that sort of statement implied all kinds of things she didn't want to think about too closely for fear of raising hopes and dashing them all at once. And she had opened her mouth to ask when his father interrupted them. 

"There's no need; we've already collected your things and moved them to the cottage in the far field." The statement made so little sense in the context of everything else that Catriona and her mother both could only stand and stare. "You'll need the land to start a farm of your own after you and Claire are married."

"Married?" he squeaked. "I barely know the girl!"

"And what has that to do with anything?" Both women were so startled that Angus was able to push past them and grab his son by the arm without interference. "I don't know what these women have done to you to drive you so completely far from sense, but in a week's time you will marry Ciaran''s daughter and this will all be done with."

He dragged Rumplestiltskin out while everyone was still taking that in. Cat reached to tug her friend back down but her fingers only closed on the fabric of his sleeve, and she thought better of it a second later. Getting into a physical confrontation with a man who outweighed each of them couldn't be the best plan she had.

But her mother stared after them, furious, and Catriona tried to wrap her mind around everything that had happened, nothing seemed to fit one statement into the other. "Mama..." she breathed. "Can he really do that? Can he make him marry someone he doesn't want to?"

"I don't know, dear," the older woman came and set dow heavily on the bench next to her daughter, tugging her close with an arm around her shoulders. "I really don't."

  


  


  


One week was far too short a time to marry. His father must have planned this out for at least a fortnight ahead and was only telling him now. Because he knew Rumplestiltskin would never agree, given half a choice. But he thought he could lecture his small, quiet son into compliance. 

They arrived back at the farm house and he narrowly avoided being thrown into the sharp corner of the table. As it was, his arm would have bruises on it up to and after this supposed wedding. Which, he had resolved, would not happen. The whole thing was ridiculous, he barely knew Claire except that she was one of the other girls in the village and, while nice enough to look at, had a cruel streak about her where Cat was concerned. And he didn't think she knew who he was by sight, though his own father's reputation would be enough to turn any girl's father to thoughts of a generous bride price. 

"I suppose your horse trading skills haven't suffered for want of use," he snapped after his father had closed the door behind them. 

Angus bunched up one meaty fist, then took a great gulp of air and held it before he lowered it again. "No. I won't send you to your wedding with a pair of black eyes, that would be too..."

"Too what? Too harsh? Too cruel? And forcing two people to marry who barely know each other and hold no affection for each other is, what, the peak of kindness?" 

"You wouldn't understand, you're too young," his father snorted at that sentiment, going over to the fire and jabbing at it with the poker. "When you have children of your own, you'll see."

"When I have children of my own, which _won't_ be by a mother of your choosing, they'll be raised knowing they were loved and _listened to._ Not treated like breeding stock or cargo for trade."

The poker came around and almost hit him in the face as his father whirled. "I am making the best of a bad situation for you, boy!" he shouted, "And why you won't see that is..." 

"Put the poker down, dear, you'll break something." Brigitte's tiny hand barely covered half of her husband's forearm. She looked over at her son and for one tiny moment Rumplestiltskin thought he might at least have an ally. "You know he's right, though. This will be good for all of us, you'll have all the trade Claire's father can bring in to help you, tools, seeds even from across the water, and your father's giving you a generous gift of land to start you off..."

"I don't care about land," he retorted, feeling small and alone and as though they were speaking two different languages, mutually incomprehensible. "Land is dirt, I don't want land!" 

"Well, that'll be a comfort to you and that whore, because you're not going to get any if y--"

"Angus!" 

Such language wasn't tolerated in the household. Father had forgotten. Rumplestiltskin hadn't, provoking his father into saying something, but it wasn't enough. And this argument was over before he could demonstrate how unreasonable the man was being, because now his mother would take him aside and tell him that he shouldn't make his father so angry, that he really was being generous, and that no one ever got what they wanted every moment of their lives. "And you'll be better off for it, I promise," she told him, sitting by him at the table while Father went out to tend the cattle and look over the fields. "Once all this has settled and you're in your own household, you'll see how good it is to have your own garden and your own fields, your own home. Make your own way in the world."

"But not with my own wife," he told her, seething. "Not with my own wife and my own children with a woman I love..." 

"That's sentiment, dear, and you should never let sentiment rule your better judgment. Sentiment can lead us down very dangerous paths."

Privately, he thought it would be more dangerous not to. To compromise when one had little idea of what one wanted was a different thing entirely from knowing what one wanted from the rest of their life and who one wanted to spend it with. Even having spent a scant hour in that small house surrounded by color and string he knew what he wanted. It did not involve being a husband to a woman who didn't look twice at him or father to a child he'd never looked for. Nor pretending to be someone he wasn't, nor pretending to be content with someone else's life.

He smiled and nodded and told his mother exactly what he planned to do. As he expected, she listened only in so much as she took in his pleasant tone and submissive posture. To his words, she paid not one whit of attention. Which was fine. When the time came, no one could say he hadn't told them what he would do.

  


  


  


Catriona stumbled through the next two days in a fog. It wasn't her place to protest his impending marriage, not to anyone but her equally indignant mother, at least. What had she expected, anyway, that she could swan about the town and pretend to airs and standing she didn't have? She was the solitary weaver's daughter, and she had no pull on anyone. 

Her mother had little to say on the subject, with the pinched expression she took on when she was trying not to speak ill of others where they couldn't defend themselves. It made Cat feel somewhat better to know that her mother didn't think much of this anyway, either. 

There were no more walks. When Catriona took her breaks from the loom she went out to hang dyed and dripping skeins, check on drying yarn already on the rods or walk around the cottage. She made it halfway up the hill to the main thoroughfare once, then decided there wasn't much point since he wouldn't be there and it wasn't a market day and turned and went back down again. The air turned cold between one day and the next, and she pulled her shawl down from the rafters and bundled herself up in it as she spun. All that remained was for the leaves to turn to ram home the idea that a beautiful summer dream was gone, or something like that. This was the cold, real world.

"Cat..." 

"Mm?" The shuttle clicked back and forth against the side beams of the loom. 

"Cat, you might want to keep an eye on what you're doing."

She'd woven down so far she was almost weaving onto the wooden frame. "Oh." But she wasn't distracted. She wasn't thinking of the panicked look in his wide dark eyes or how he'd clung tighter to her, too, when his father had come storming in.

"Cat..." Her mother came and sat by her as she leaned over and moved the threads down so that she had more to weave. "It'll turn out all right. I know it seems terrible now, and it is," she allowed, hugging her daughter close. "It's a hard thing, to love someone so much and lose them. Whether to another woman or another passion."

"Like the sea?" she asked with a tiny smile, thinking of her father and every time he came home with his face wind-lashed and red. 

Her mother laughed. "Like the sea, yes. Like anything. Love is a much more powerful force than many give it credit for. People will move mountains and walk across vast lands for love. Or, sometimes, people will endure things they never dreamed possible if they have love, and faith." 

"Faith in the people you love." Cat parsed that out, then leaned back and dropped her head forward onto the front beam of her loom. "It's not the faith I'm missing, it's the hope. Should I even be hoping for this? It's not as though we made any promise to each other..."

"He might not have said the words, but I'm reasonably certain that was more from being tongue-tied than a lack of intent." It startled Cat into laughing, then clapping her hands over her mouth when laughing led to tears. "Bear up a little while longer. I have a feeling..."

The knock on the door wasn't the pounding of a hamhanded fist against the wood but it still made Cat squeak. Her mother spared a moment to give her a look and then went to open it. Rumplestiltskin all but fell against her, trembling.

Catriona tripped over the bench in her haste to reach them. "What happened? What did he do? Are you all right?" And about half a dozen other questions as he tried to explain to the both of them. Her mother, wisely, kept quiet and let them get their babbling out. 

"Come away with me," he was saying. She heard it when she snapped her mouth shut to let him talk, to try and curb her impatience and confusion long enough to get an idea of what was going on. "Come away with me? They'll know I'm gone in the morning, but I've been gathering what I could the past couple of days, and..." 

And neither of them could speak after that, because she threw her arms around him and kissed him. 

As kisses went, it wasn't bad. She had nothing to compare it to but whole volumes of understanding poured through her in the moment between when she flung herself at him and when they parted for breath. Why the girls whispered in corners and threw themselves at likely young men. Why poets wrote songs and compared it to fruits and sun showers and various other things. Why a father would get so angry at his son giving such kisses to an unwanted girl. She blinked and saw the new comprehension reflected on his face, mixed with confusion in the tiny crease of his brow. 

But then he kissed her again and confusion would just have to wait.

Some interminable time later her lips felt puffy and swollen and her cheeks felt hot. Her whole body felt too hot and too strange in her clothes. And all they'd done was kissing. "Catriona!" her mother called. By the sound of it she'd been calling her name for a while, now.

"Yes?" she looked around, over her left shoulder and then her right. And then she saw what box her mother was pulling things out of. "Mama..."

"You'll need _something_ to trade Ranald for a good cart-pony. Let me see what you've got..." Rumplestiltskin handed her the pack with a numb, half-gaping expression. "That'll do for food on the road, and for a little while, but there's little enough here to start a household with and the things you'll need are more expensive. You'll have to see if you can sell these a couple of towns down the line..."

"Mama, those are all your tapestries..."

"And I won't need half as much when I have half as many mouths to feed, will I? You can use them to line the walls of your home, or to sleep under while you're on the road. And there," she added another smaller stack to the pile. "There's all those linens you've been working on, and your dress..."

"Mama!" she yelped.

"Was I not supposed to talk about that?"

Catriona couldn't glare, not tonight. From everything dull or out of reach to everything happening at once, new and strange and full of the unknown, the most she could do was cling to Rumplestiltskin and try not to forget anything she would need. Because evidently they were running away. "Where are we going?"

"How will we get there? Once Father knows I'm gone..."

Her mother waved it all off. "I'll get you a map, and you'll take the trade road straight to the docks, it's about the season for your father to be coming in. He can help you find a boat that'll take you across to the mainland, and you can make your way from there, where you wish. As for Ranald," she snorted. "I'll wake him up and do the horse trading for your cart and pony, it's been a few years but I think I still remember how. This isn't the first time I've managed the abduction of some poor bastard's son in the middle of the night."

"Mama!" She felt him hide his face in her hair, but also felt the tickling breath of his laughter. 

When the contents of several chests had been emptied into a pile on the table, two baskets filled with other odds and ends, her mother surveyed the room. "There. It'll have to do, and I'll send along your wheel and loom when your father gets home and tells me where you've gone."

"Thank you," he reached around her to shake the older woman's hand. "You didn't have to do this, but thank you."

She shook his hand and waved off further gratitude. "Yes, I did. Cat wouldn't stop moping without you." 

Which earned Catriona a startled look from her friend -- betrothed -- that was touched at the corners with amusement. She wrinkled her nose at him. "I was not moping."

"You were," came from over her shoulder. 

"Only a little bit."

Her mother shook her head, chuckling. "You stay here, and I'll go wake Ranald. If your father comes, well, you can try arguing him down. And if that doesn't work, go on and hit him with the dye paddle," she pointed to the corner. 

Heads bent together, dark hair mingling at the ends, it was hard not to giggle at the thought of Rumplestiltskin hitting his father with the dye paddle at least as tall as Cat was. And at the euphoria that they would soon be gone, out of the town where they were both known as one thing and off on the road where they would be seen as something entirely else. "Do you think we'll manage it?" she gasped, then answered her own question with a half a bob of her head. "No, we'll manage. Father will be at the docks, we'll meet him," she laughed, breathless and dizzy. "We'll meet him, and he'll help us. And it'll be all right."

He pulled her into his arms, wiry strength and burning like coal fire despite his slight build. "We'll manage. We'll be all right."

  


  


  


She almost fell overboard after the simple ceremony, her father presiding as captain of his own vessel now. And taking her to task for leaning too far over the rail, even if it was out of sheer joy. 

"And there you are," he muttered, grousing and grumbling for form's sake before stomping down to the lower deck and leaving the newlyweds to what privacy they could find on the ship.

He had one hand on the rail and one arm around her waist, tight as an iron bar. And he pressed kisses to her neck and shoulder and they laughed and it was the most beautiful afternoon in her life. Until, she thought, tomorrow. 

"That's where we'll land," he pointed over her shoulder at a stretch of green, a narrow thread on the horizon at this distance. "We'll fetch up there and build our home, and you can raise sheep and children and whatever you like." 

Cat squirmed around in her husband's arms only to see him grinning like a child who'd gotten away with the juiciest pie. "I better not be doing all the raising, young man, you'll have responsibilities in our household too! I won't be minding all the work while you go off gallivanting around the known world." Some lessons, she thought right after she said that, came harshly. But her father was still on the lower deck and didn't hear.

Rumplestiltskin seemed to understand her, nonetheless. He tucked her in close, her head to his shoulder and she closed her eyes to better feel his soft touch over her hair. "Never you worry. I'll be right there with you, as long as I can have you by me to steer my way."

She smiled, not that he could see it with her face buried in his shirt. "Oh, I'll be around. Come flood or fire, you won't be able to get rid of me." 

"Now why," he tipped her head up just so he could kiss the tip of her now-scrunched nose. "Why would I ever want to do that?"

"I can't think of a single reason."


End file.
